Demand forecasting is an important component of a manufacturing company’s demand-supply management. The accuracy of the demand forecasts for all their lines of products:

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Topic focus: forecast accuracy over the product lines in demand-supply planning. The question asks how forecast accuracy behaves across different conditions and dimensions of forecasting.
Option 1: 'Increases for products with shorter product life cycles'. In reality, shorter product life cycles tend to bring higher volatility and more rapid changes in demand, which generally reduce forecast accuracy rather than increase it. This option overstates the stability of demand and underestimates the challenge of forecasting in fast-changing categories.
Option 2: 'Increases for the manufacturer and supplier with a multiple echelon supply chain'. A more complex, multi-echelon network often propagates lead times and variability, making accurate forecasting more difficult due to longer planning horizons, demand amplification (the bullwhip effect), and coordination challenges. Therefore, accuracy does not inherently increase with more echelons; it often decreases or becomes more uncertain.
Option 3: 'Decreases with an increase in safety stock levels'. Safety stock is a deliberate protection against stockouts and does not improve forecast accuracy; it affects service levels and inventory robustness but does not make the underlying demand forecasts more accurate. In fact, the forecast error measure remains tied to the quality of the forecast inputs, not the buffering strategy.
Option 4: 'Decreases with the increase in the length of the forecast horizon from 1 month to 6 months'. This aligns with common forecasting principles: as the forecast horizon lengthens, uncertainty grows and errors tend to increase, leading to lower accuracy for longer horizons. This is a well-established relationship in demand forecasting.
Option 5: 'Increases with increased disaggregation of the forecast into individual SKUs (Stock-Keeping Units) from overall product lines'. Disaggregating forecasts to individual SKUs usually introduces more variability and noise because each SKU has its own demand pattern, promotions, and customer behavior. This typically reduces forecast accuracy at the SKU level, even if aggregate accuracy might appear smoother. So increasing disaggregation does not increase accuracy; it often decreases it.
Overall, the options that claim higher accuracy under conditions of volatility, complexity, or granularity are inconsistent with standard forecasting understanding. Conversely, the option describing longer horizons as more uncertain fits the established pattern of forecast accuracy declining with greater temporal distance.
In summary, the reasoning across options reflects how forecast quality is sensitive to time horizon, product life cycle dynamism, supply-chain structure, safety stock decisions, and level of forecast disaggregation, with longer horizons and more granular SKU forecasts generally challenging accuracy more than shorter, aggregated, or simpler setups.

MGT175_FA25_A00 Mid-Term Examination

Demand forecasting is an important component of a manufacturing company’s demand-supply management. The accuracy of the demand forecasts for all their lines of products:

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